Kimiko Terai

Parties with Policy Preferences and Uncertainty Over Voter Behavior

The equilibrium redistributive policy proposals of two parties with policy preferences are studied. Each party’s ideal policy coincides with that of citizens having a particular income level, and the party’s utility function reflects its attitude to the trade-off between the choice of preferred policy and the likelihood of victory. When parties face uncertainty about citizens’ abstention from voting, divergent equilibrium proposals are derived which are more moderate than their contrasting ideal policies. Political equilibria under different prior beliefs on abstention are then compared. It is shown that a lower likelihood of abstention in a particular income group induces both parties to make proposals catering to that group, in equilibrium.

Rivalry among agents seeking large budgets

An agent competing for resources from a principal may benefit from having the principal believe that the agent shares his preferences, whereas the principal may prefer that agents reveal their types, inducing a separating equilibrium. Such incentives are explored in a model with a principal who sets a budget in two separate periods, and two different agents allocate that budget among services. In the second period, the principal allocates a larger budget to the agent that he believes is more likely to share his preferences. In the first period, each agent may behave strategically, spending more on the service the principal prefers, thereby hiding the agent’s type; this benefits the principal in the current period, but hurts him in the future because he does not know which agent would spend in the way he prefers. The principal may induce separation by giving the agents a large budget in the initial period, or by hiding his preferences from them.

Budgets under Delegation

Consider a principal who sets a budget that the agent allocates among different services. Because the preferences of the agent may differ from those of the principal, the budget the principal sets can be lower or higher than in the first-best solution. When the principal is uncertain about the agents preferences, the agent may choose an allocation that signals his type, thereby affecting the size of the budget the principal will set in the following period. The equilibrium may have separation or pooling. In a pooling equilibrium, the agent may mis-represent his preferences, aiming to get a large budget in the future period.

Redistribution under proportional representation

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between proportional representation voting system and the size of government via its effects on political equilibrium. The multiparty spatial competition on tax-transfer policy and the post-electoral coalition formation are examined. The implemented policy does not necessarily reflect the median voter’s preference, ranging from laissez-faire to a redistributive economy according to income distribution. It can even reflect the preference of the lower income class in spite of equal income distribution, leading to the large-scale redistribution. Our results can explain the heterogeneous sizes of government observed among European proportional representation democracies.

Why principals tolerate biases of inaccurate agents

Some agents are more accurate than others in estimating the best policy. The more accurately an agent estimates a policys effects, the more he will resist biases, such as bribes from a special interest. Thus, a special interest needs to pay a larger bribe to an accurate agent than to an inaccurate agent. The accurate agent who is biased will then more likely cause harm than does an inaccurate agent who favors the special interest. Therefore, the principal may gain more from controlling biases of an accurate agent than of an inaccurate one. Thus, high ability of public officials may be associated with little corruption.

Rewarding Successes Discourages Experimentation

Consider a principal who allocates a fixed budget among risk-averse agents. Each agent first chooses a policy or project. After observing the outcomes of their choices, the principal allocates a larger budget to the agents who had adopted the policy with the superior outcome. A subgame perfect Nash equilibrium may have all agents make the same choice, though the principal would prefer that they experiment. If the number of agents is large, or if the principal commits to reducing the aggregate budget when no agent had the superior outcome, or if he commits to avoid funding a riskless policy, different agents can be induced to adopt different policies.